That's one thing I guess. Even so I could care less about this. If what's left of atari wants to slice it's own throat that's their business. Stupid is as stupid does and suing the few remaining fans they have ranks right up there. That's bean counters for ya.

Infogrames has forever tainted the Atari brand to the point that it is almost worthless. They've done more damage than a hundred Tramiels. Their shareholders should be pissed. What an ignominious waste of an incredible legacy.

The fact that the BIOS of a machine made in 1975 can be DMCAed shows us why China and India is gonna kick our ass. Can you believe such insanity? our entire industry is building upon the shoulders of the giants that came before but thanks to Valenti (may he rot in hell) and his endless copyrights combined with DMCA garbage the west is pretty much dead with regards to innovation.

One simply can no longer build on the ideas of the past without a giant minefield of patents and copyrights controlled by absolute

No dufus my proposal was to offer them a percentage of ALL sales with no bullshit. The plan was a whole 3% for us, 5% for the DOSBox guys as a thank you, and the rest given to the authors after BOM which would have been quite cheap so you are talking more than 80% split between them. I'd also remind that we are talking about shareware titles here that were originally DESIGNED TO BE GIVEN AWAY to build interest in the full apps. I proposed a larger cut for those that gave full games but even if all they offe

Still, it's their work, so surely they can charge whatever they want for it--or not distribute it at all?

so now I'm looking at doing it in China where guess what? I won't have to pay them shit and can just sell it on a ton of places like chinamart. yet again the west loses because of greedy MBAs, why am I not surprised?

Greedy MBAs? Says the guy who's contemplating selling other people's work for profit.

Look, there's no rationalizing it: you and others want to make money by selling other people's stuff, and

You're right they can sell it for anything they want and I can just have it made in China where they don't play their little reindeer games, get the picture now Sparky? ALL YOU ARE DOING is taking work away from Americans, that's it, that's all. I can build it in China without paying them dick, and don't forget we are talking code they have ALREADY GIVEN AWAY on literally hundreds of thousands of discs, as that was the whole damned point of shareware.

Sorry MR AC, but the original VCS was prototyped in 1975, and I'm sure their BIOS would have come under copyright then. There are quite a few sites out there with the history of Atari, feel free to look it up. IIRC they had to keep it under wraps until 76 so that a contract one of them had would expire before they could show the hardware at CES, but the original Stella prototype? 1975.

It was on sale in 77 and only became popular in 1980 with the release of Space Invaders. I should know as I had one of the

The VCS never had a BIOS. Coleco proved that it was legal to clone the 2600 way back then with Expansion Module #1 that you reference. Atari sued them for patent infringement and lost because Coleco used off-the-shelf parts. And this happened when Atari's patents were active.

Cloning the 2600 is legal, which means that emulation is legal (on top of later court rulings that showed emulation itself to be legal).

Except they are spamming DMCA notices -- the C standing for Copyright -- and all of the claims made in the notices are about copyright infringement. I hope someone nails Atari to the wall for this bullshit.

Here's a copy of the initial post of the DCemu thread linked in the summary:

I received this cease and desist letter from Atari, are they completely dumb, did you guys get one? Should we be concerned? As far as I know, its still legal to distribute emulators unless some new law passed? and of all the sites, they are referring to my old ass DCEmu archive.

"Atari, Inc.417 5th AvenueNew York, NY 10016-2204

Tel: 212-726-6500Fax: 212-726-4214E-mail: us.legal@atari.com

August 30, 2011

Re: seanbajuice.com

Dear Domain Admin:

I am writing on behalf of Atari, Inc./Atari Interactive, Inc. (“Atari”) to demand that you immediately and permanently cease and desist from the infringing activities described below and comply with the other demands set forth in this letter.

Atari is a global producer, publisher and distributor of interactive entertainment software for all market segments and all interactive game platforms. Atari is the exclusive owner of intellectual property rights, including copyrights and trademarks, in numerous interactive entertainment software products, including those listed below, and vigilantly protects its rights.

Based on available information, Atari has a good faith belief that the url(s):

infringes its copyright and other intellectual property right by copying, reproducing and/or offering for distribution, display and/or download (including through links to other sites) unauthorized console emulation software and/or unauthorized copies of game products (software) protected by Atari’s copyright rights. Atari’s copyrighted works that have been infringed include:

Atari 800; Atari 2600; Atari 7800; Atari Lynx

The infringing material or the material that is the subject of infringing activities (collectively referred to as “Infringing Material”) is listed and/or identified by console and game-related titles or variations thereof, console and game-related descriptions, or images of console and game-related artwork.

The Infringing Material is in violation of Atari’s exclusive rights under the United States Copyright Act. It therefore constitutes copyright infringement in violation of 17 U.S.C. 501.

Pursuant to the provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”), which is codified at 17 USC 512, Atari demands that you 1) expeditiously remove or disable access to the Infringing Material; and 2) take steps to prevent further infringement of Atari’s intellectual property rights at the above referenced URL(s).

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described herein is not authorized by Atari, its agent, or the law. The information in this notification is accurate. Under penalty of perjury, I affirm I am authorized to act on behalf of Atari whose exclusive copyright rights I believe to be infringed as described herein.

This notice is not intended to be a complete statement of the facts or law in this matter. Nor is it intended to be a complete statement of Atari's positions, rights or remedies, legal or equitable, all of which are specifically reserved.

If you have any questions, please contact me by phone 212-726-6500 or email at us.legal@atari.com.

They might be infringing, or they might not. It all depends on how the emulator was written, and whether or not they're providing ROM images or linking to other sites that do. Emulators are legal, but as I understand it there are certain limitations to avoid legal issues. E.g. the IBM-compatible BIOS, which was (legally) reverse-engineered from the IBM PC BIOS. The BIOS in classic Macs, by comparison, has never been reverse-engineered (to my knowledge), so in

The TIA is in no way a "video ROM". And emulators obviously do "use" the TIA, or at least clone the functionality of it, else you'd get no video output. But, thanks to Coleco, cloning the TIA is legal as a settled matter of case law, even if the patents were still active.

I really don't understand what you're trying to say there. If you want to assert the TIA has no actual firmware in it, that is fine, and perhaps true, I have no idea. As the system itself has no BIOS, it is entirely possible there is no video BIOS either.

But if it has no ROM, then the emulator can't be 'using' it. Uh, duh.

And I don't know why you decided that 'cloning' has to do with anything. Emulators do not 'clone'. Emulators 'emulate'. You can tell because they're called called emulators, not clones.

Except they are spamming DMCA notices -- the C standing for Copyright -- and all of the claims made in the notices are about copyright infringement. I hope someone nails Atari to the wall for this bullshit.

His point is, a DMCA takedown notice is sent to an ISP, not a site owner, in order to compel them to remove the content without requiring the cooperation of the allegedly infringing party. The ISP must comply, in exchange for which they are absolved of any liability in hosting the allegedly infringing content. So, he's technically correct, it's not a DMCA takedown notice in the purest sense, but it fits all the requirements of a DMCA takedown notice excepting who the notice was sent to.

To be fair, a few of them do link to Copyrighted ROMs and some give instructions on where/how to obtain copyrighted ROMs. It can be argued that links themselves do not constitute infringement, but they are not always upheld. I have never heard of instructions, being considered infringement. I guess they just wanted to bully people into removing stuff they didnt like.

but really people do you think that the people that use emulators would buy atari retreads? Or worse do you think they would wouldn't buy a good new version of an Atari game?This is just a waste. Next they will go after Strella.

Look over at AtariAge. The front page has an article about Atari's Greatest Hits for iOS. A lot of people, including myself bought it, just because we're classic gaming fans. They're also the same demographic who bought many of the all in one joysticks and keychains. Just like with music and movies, the biggest fans are naturally the biggest spenders AND downloaders. One day maybe these idiots will understand that.

If you read the letter linked in the summary, the only thing Atari cites are alleged copyright infringements. The letter is a by-the-numbers DMCA takedown notice. Everything that a DMCA takedown notice is supposed to include is included. It's practically boilerplate. The only deviation from the norm is it was apparently not sent to the ISP, it was sent to the site owner. The purpose of a DMCA takedown notice is to force compliance by going to the ISP instead of persuading the site owner to cooperate. It's n

If they were smart, they would stop overestimating the value of the Atari trademark. Most mobile gamers are too young to have a positive reaction to the name itself. The rest are probably old and experienced enough to realise their past achievements are not relevant today. Just find a new name. It is actually possible to launch a succesful brand with a name unknown twenty years ago, you know.

Bullshit. It's more legalized extortion. They know just the threat of a length and expensive lawsuit is enough to get these small operations to shut down, even when Atari knows damned well they don't have a case. Laws and rights don't mean shit if you can't afford to defend them. Welcome to America.

An Atari 400/800/1200(XL) emulator requires copies of the contents of the ROM chips to run (BASIC, Atari-DOS, ASSEMBLER). But for many third-party games that booted directly from disk, that wouldn't apply.

For the games (consoles, computers) themselves, the ROM codes of many games have been put online. In the past you would need the original hardware and some EPROMS to play the games, but now you can just run the emulator.

Atari did bring out a retro style joystick controller that had about 100+ original 260

Exactly. If they don't protect the name "Atari" from being used by these sites, there's a chance that someone under the age of 30 might actually learn what "Atari" is.

When using someone else's trademark in reference to products or services, isn't it usually sufficient to acknowledge that the trademark in question belongs to whoever? You mark the first occurrence of a trademark with the appropriate marks (which/. unhelpfully mangled for me, so they're not included for reference). Once that's done, you the

No, I don't think so. Intellectual Property, perhaps, but the takedown request, which may be seen by following one of the links in TFA, specifically mentions "17 U.S.C. sect. 501", which is copyright, not trademark law. (For trademark law, see the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C.)

This really looks like they think he's distributing their property. He should take a deep breath and send them a letter, clearly stating that he's doing no such thing.

They obviously believe that an "Atari emulator" that emulates, as closely as possible, an actual Atari could feasibly be confused with an actual Atari product. And I have to admit, they have a point.

Personally I think emulators should be legal, but I have no idea how a lawyer would argue this in court. Probably some sort of disclaimer stating very clearly that it is not associated with or endorsed by Atari would be enough to cover their legal behinds, but even then I'm sure Atari would try to challenge it.

Yeah... but its not a part for an Atari product. Its a thing that can use an Atari product. Its closer to a scenario where you build a replica of a Ford V8 and advertise that it accepts all the same parts as a Ford V8.

I'm not an expert but it could be:- the logical design of the circuitry is copyrighted?- an actual dump of a system ROM is used? (I know that was the case for the Intellivision emulator)

Personally, I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. All the folks that have good vibes from the Atari heydays of the 80s are usually the ones using the emulators; they are also the potential customers. A 10-year old kid is not going to stop buying the XBOX360 re-make just because he can play the 8-bit version for

If they are going to crack down on Atari 2600 emulators, I wonder if it would be okay to produce a Coleco Gemini [wikipedia.org] emulator instead? Not likely anyone would try to enforce that trademark if there is anyone who could enforce it in the first place.

So they should go after the sites that host ROMs and such. Emulators are legal, regardless of how people may use them to do illegal things. Courts have stated this in many cases in the past.
As long as the emulator authors don't go so far as telling people where to get ROMs and the like, I don't see how Atari would have a leg to stand on.

So they should go after the sites that host ROMs and such. Emulators are legal, regardless of how people may use them to do illegal things. Courts have stated this in many cases in the past.
As long as the emulator authors don't go so far as telling people where to get ROMs and the like, I don't see how Atari would have a leg to stand on.

This is true... but the fact remains that the average person is notoriously vulnerable to frivolous lawsuits. Most people don't want to go to court, even if they'd win, because the amount of money a big corporation can throw into harassing and delaying them in legal ways is very large. Even if you're totally in the right, what's easier... fighting a lengthy legal battle over your right to continue pursuing some hobby you're up to, spending large amounts of your own money in the process? Or simply conced

The emulator authors are doing neither (unless you can find a trademark for a targeted machine outside of the dead "Atari 2600" mark). The 2600, which is a targeted machine, never had a BIOS. Try again.

Although the case in question pertains to whether or not Connectix as a whole were engaging in copyright infringement by way of having "intermediate copies" of the BIOS for the original Sony Playstation, I would submit that the following statement in Judge Canby's ruling on the case is pretty definitive regarding both the legality of emulators as well as the subject matter (trademarks) with regard to which

That's one decision, and it's also the only 'emulation' decision I can find doing a full text search of Nimmer on Copyright. That's not "many cases," as claimed. Also, there's no real discussion in Connectix with regards to the actual act of emulation; Connectix constrained its analysis to the issue of copying of Sony's BIOS for the purpose of building/testing the emulator. Not saying it's not 'good' law, but it's not very 'strong' law; it may even be dicta.

Lame copies are not a replacement for the real thing. This is the basic flaw in all of this nonsense and nonsense like it.

It makes absolutely no sense to attack the enthusiasts that have been keeping your brand alive for years. If you want to "cash in", then license the use of the original ROMs. You could even improve the emulation experience on the platforms you want better visibility on.

Forgive the e-peen waving here, but I've actually emulated a GBA emulating a GBC emulating an NES before (only worked with like 5 specific NES games but still). You could easily take it a few more chains up if you really tried. I know there is a proof-of-concept GBA emulator for the DS, and a DS emulator for the Wii, and a Wii emulator for the computer, but I don't know at which point this particular sequence would break.

correct, if anyone was working for atari in the 90's they were just in denial, Pretty sure Time Warner still owned them directly into the ground up till the jag and then traded off to infogames probably as a joke. Which I honestly cant say who makes a shittier game tween those three.

After that its hard to tell, Atari is like a crack whore, hitting up each company for the opportunity to score another hit.

Atari passed through several hands between Time-Warner and Inforgrames. Before Warner, it was owned by it's founders (Nolan Bushnell, et al). After the North American video game crash, the Tramiels (Commodore's founders) purchased Atari's debt from Time-Warner in the mid-80s for next to nothing. After a reasonable run of actually producing compelling product (Atari ST/TT/Falcon line and the over-hyped and critically bugged Jaguar), they sold it to a disk drive manufacturer in the 90s, who in turn sold it to

My stint was in 93 and prior to the Jaguar release. As far as who ran the show then, I have no clue -- I was a contractor, worked from home and only met the team in Milpitas once when I was in the Bay Area for a visit since I lived in Seattle back then.

There's this Triangular Lawyer, flying around, suing at anyone and anything that uses the Atari name! The small targets are single businesses - the larger ones are small companies and clubs, which, when sued, split up and take the emulators and pass them around!

Do these retards understand that in a couple of years, your iphone is going to have the 3D capability of a PS2? Who's going to play "asteroids" as an iPhone app when Sega will be releasing Shenmu as an app?

They are assuming nostalgia value, but seriously, the larger market for the smartphones is 20-somethings who have NO memory of 8-bit Atari games. To them nostalgia is Pokemon and Power Rangers, and the games they played were SNES Starfox or better.

They don't have the right to go after these emulators, though - they don't infringe "Atari's" copyrights at all. None of them include BIOS images, and the 2600 never had a BIOS to begin with. Also AFAIK all patents are expired on the targeted machines, especially in the case of the 2600. The machine names (2600, 7800, etc) are also not trademarked ("Atari 2600" used to be trademarked, but is a dead mark now).

As far as I can tell, they're not going after the emulators themselves, but the sites that host them...that also often link to ROM hosting sites, or sneakily tell you where to go to get them. AtariAge has direct links to ROMS!

Also the "names" are trademarked. So those sites had better be using the ATARIÂ® and 2600â as appropriate.

How could ignore you when I hadn't even seen your other post when I posted thi, impatient much?

The various Atari trademarks are most certainly still active. Check the Atari Anthology box if you don't believe me. And even if the model number isn't still trademarked, the games still are as is the Atari name.

Look, lets be honest...emulators are used for copyright infringement, we all know this. Sure there's a few homebrew games...but the majority of emulator users don't play them.

Who's going to play "asteroids" as an iPhone app when Sega will be releasing Shenmu as an app?

I would- Asteroids is a great game. (Let's ignore that it might suck without physical buttons- that's clearly not the point you were making). Without looking it up on Wikipedia, I genuinely don't know (nor care) what Shenmu is, beyond being a game. I don't claim to be typical, nor a part of the most lucrative market. I say this to show that your personal view (*gasp*) doesn't represent every person on the planet, despite the fact you think it

Yes, but I bet most of those sites link to sites that host the game ROMs and other atari systems did have BIOS's even if the 2600 didn't.

And as far as I know, the "names" of the systems and games are still trademarked. And while some are saying "This isn't the real Atari, they haven't done anything", they most certainly have. Ever hear of Atari Anthology? They've also got an iOS collection out. http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ataris-greatest-hits/id422966028?mt=8 [apple.com]

Did you search through the US trademark database? The system names are not trademarked. The only one that ever was (that is relevant to this discussion) was the 2600, and that mark has been dead for years.

No, it was released and published by Atari itself...the "developer" was digital eclipse. The PS2 version has the proper ATARI logo and everything. And though we may not like it, Infrogrames IS Atari now. I also do not believe that Digital Eclipse's emulation technology is free to download.

And that iOS app is not Atari Anthology, but a separate thing It's not even by Digital Eclipse. You'll also note that on the sidebar it shows in-app downloads...the app is free, but the games it runs aren't.